The fight is not over: now the San Luis Obispo supervisors need to do the sane and sensible thing: VOTE NO - TELL Phillips 66 No More Bomb Trains !!
The proposed Phillips 66 Oil Train offloading facility in San Luis Obispo County would ship 3 million gallons per day of volatile and toxic crude by rail in outdated and unsafe oil tank cars into California, including to and fro the Inland Empire and LA Harbor, all the way through Downtown LA and the San Fernando Valley. The Revised Draft Environmental Impact Report concludes that the proposed Phillips 66 rail spur would cause significant and unavoidable rail accident hazard risks along the main rail line that could result in oil spills, fires, and explosions near populated areas.
"If the Phillips 66 project is approved in San Luis Obispo, it could put millions of Californians in the blast zone of trains hauling highly volatile crude,"
said Felicia Bander from SoCal 350, delivered petitions from hundreds of Southern California residents asking the City to take action. "We applaud the Los Angeles City Council for putting the health and safety of LA's communities first, and hope this action will send a powerful message to both the County of San Luis Obispo and Phillips 66: We don't want bomb trains in our communities."
"As
we now know," said Roger Lin, Staff Attorney, Communities for a Better Environment, "oil trains carrying extreme and explosive crude oil present a clear threat and environmental injustice to communities of color up and down California. We welcome Los Angeles to join the several cities, also under threat from a catastrophic and potentially fatal derailment, that have already gone on record to oppose this project."
Sam Sukaton, Southern California Dirty Fuels Organizer with the Sierra Club, said “We applaud the Los Angeles City Council’s decision to oppose the construction of the Phillips 66 Company Santa Maria Refinery Rail Spur Extension Project. We hope this action influences the County of San Luis Obispo to block this incredibly dangerous crude oil from being transported so near our homes altogether, ensuring our safety from these so-called “bomb trains.”
Rachel Bruhnke, resident in the Harbor Area, said, "Opposing the Crude-by-Rail project is the right course for the City Council to take. We will never transition to a sustainable economy powered by clean, renewable energy if we continue to build and expand the infrastructure that supports fossil fuel use."
The Phillips 66 Project includes shipping the dirtiest crude oil on the planet, tar sands from Canada, which is accelerating global climate destabilization. For Southern California this includes more droughts, wildfires, extreme weather, and sea level encroachment. On a related issue, the City of Los Angeles also voted to support SB 350 (De Leon and Leno), the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015, which would go a long way toward establishing California as a world leader in renewable energy.
Diane Middleton, Secretary-Treasurer of the Harry Bridges Institute (HBI) said, "The 15th CD (where many of our HBI supporters work and live) is home to the Port of Los Angeles and every refinery within the boundaries of the City of LA. We are already exposed to an incredible burden of toxic substances both on the job and in our communities.
"The proposal to move 400 tank cars (known as bomb trains for their propensity to explode) carrying two million tons of crude oil on a weekly basis through highly populated areas is ill advised at best and could be called total insanity.
"There can be no justification for exposing millions of people along the proposed route from northern California through the Central Valley and along the LA River into refineries in the Harbor area. The EIR connected to the Phillips 66 expansion concludes there are "significant and unavoidable rail accident hazard risks." There was more oil spilled from trains in 2013 than the previous 40 years combined.
"If Harry Bridges, founder of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, was alive today he would mobilize to stop the Bomb Trains and today we begin by urging our LA City Council to go on record opposing this hazardous project."
Through collaboration, SoCal 350 Climate Action aims to mobilize, support, and strengthen the efforts of different organizations and community members who are working toward solutions to dirty fuel dependence and who are battling the effects of global-warming-caused climate disruption. SoCal 350 is affiliated with the international climate change organization 350.org. https://www.facebook.com/SoCal350
The Harry Bridges Institute, now in its 17th year of operation, was founded to meet a pressing need to educate a new generation of workers about the rich history of the labor movement; to demonstrate the working community and to showcase and celebrate the contributions of labor leaders as well as rank-and-file trade unionists, not only in the founding of unions, but in the continuous struggle for worker’s rights.
Harry Bridges, champion of those rights and true union hero, founded the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) based on principles held in common by free trade unions the world over:
International Solidarity,
Social Justice and Equality,
Union Democracy and
The Right of Workers to Organize in
Free Trade Unions
The work of the HBI is aimed, not only at reviving the validity of these principles within the labor community, but also at “spreading the gospel” of trade unionism to the public at large. For decades, Americans have been told that unions are negative, and counterproductive to the ideals of American society, when in fact the opposite is true. A closer, more honest look reveals that many societal improvements – the benefits, etc. – have been earned by the blood, sweat, and tears of trade unionists, fighting for what they believed to be basic human rights.
The Harry Bridges Institute Community Labor Center has a large meeting room that is available to labor and community groups for meetings and events. We have a separate training room with state of the art video and audio equipment. We have a traditional (book) library and also a video library of hundreds of interviews with rank and file trade unionists from up and down the West Coast. If you have not yet seen this outstanding facility be sure to stop by. We are open Monday thru Thursday 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. . As funds become available we hope to be open on a full-time basis.
We stand for the principle that our working class is based on labor throughout the world and that we must both educate ourselves about the struggles of workers everywhere and support these struggles as needed. We have organized in support of the MUA (Maritime Union of Australia), the Liverpool Dockers, The United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) and other international labor battles.
The HBI has developed an outstanding program of labor education directed at high school students, union members, and the community. We do everything from labor boat tours of the harbor to role playing lessons from the 1934 strike.
The HBI promotes a positive culture for labor by recognizing the contributions working class people make not only to their unions but the communities in which they live.
